Time and Death
by ncfan
Summary: Tsunade-centric. The two things I have never accepted are what has finally brought me home.


Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

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I've spent my entire life trying to outrun time.

Well, not outrun it so much as run _away_ from it.

I thought I would stay young forever; I thought the sun would never set on my life. I used to be so young, and with the irrepressible arrogance of the young, I vowed that I would never grow old.

I thought that only the old died. I didn't think that those sweet-faced, heartbreakingly innocent children callusing their hands on sleek, evilly glinting kunai would die on those kunai within months, their bodies rotting without burial in the enemy's hands. When I thought of death, I looked at those with lines appearing on their faces and silver clustering in their hair. I didn't think that that would ever be me.

I didn't know that someone could grow old before their time. I thought that time and aging occurred in neat, predictable intervals, and that it could only occur either on time or late, but never early.

I wasn't aware that someone's mind and soul could rot before their body was cold. I thought that the first could only occur after the second; I didn't know what evil and madness lurked in the hearts of men.

I didn't think that Death would ever come for someone I cared about. I thought that my life, and by extension the lives of all those around me, was irreversibly charmed.

I didn't think that it would ever happen to me.

I was wrong.

Time doesn't stop for anyone. With my eyes, I trace the fine lines gathering around Jiraiya's eyes. With my eyes, I watch as a new generation grows up and grows old; I know, and I wonder how I failed to notice it before.

More often than not, it is the young who die, not the old. _–Nawaki, a baby of twelve, died screaming for his sister, who had been fifteen years his senior and more like his mother than his sister, and I didn't hear, because I was too far away to help—_ The young don't _live _to become old.

I remember the night I first met Chiyo. It was early on in the Second War; I was maybe twenty-one years old. It was night, it was cold, and we had been separated from our individual groups. By the light of a camp fire, I saw lines on her face, ugly iron streaks in her red hair (which, even when she had been young, was probably her only beauty), and I thought, with aversion, _So old._ I estimated her age to be in her fifties, maybe even her sixties. She was, in fact, forty-one.

Sarutobi-sensei's hair started going gray at thirty-five. It was when I noticed for the first time the silver in his previously dark hair that I first got the notion that some age far sooner than others.

In particular, it is the lot of kages. My grandfather's hair was beginning to go hoary at the roots by the time he died, and I suspect that Minato, if he had lived—_My single most greatest failure is reflected in the face of his son. Jiraiya sent warning of the Kyuubi's attack on Konoha a week before the monster came, knowing that I could get there in time, and begged me to return, but being so filled with hate as I was, I didn't listen, and broke my sensei and Jiraiya's hearts—_would have had silver clustering in his bright gold hair by now. It is why I didn't want to become Hokage, but my body had already gotten there in defiance of my wishes.

Maintaining a youthful appearance isn't so much about vanity as it is about denial. I don't want to face…my face. I don't want to face what I've lost. I have only once looked into the mirror after dropping the illusion. In fantasy, I am a beautiful young woman still, flawless and seductive. In reality, I am an aging, verging on ugly old woman. Jiraiya and Orochimaru aged gracefully; I did not.

When the illusion is dropped, my hair is entirely silver, almost to the point of stark whiteness, brittle and dry, deep lines like canyons branch out form gaunt, sunken eye sockets, and eyes I can barely believe are mine (haunted, stricken eyes) burn out from hollows in my face. All are cruel testaments of a life of loss and failure, reminders that no matter how much I didn't want to, I too have grown old before my time.

Orochimaru was dead in mind and in heart long before his physical body breathed its last. I was just too blind—or too selfish, preoccupied by my own problems—to notice.

Death does not discriminate between faces, nor does it bow to the collective will of man. When Nawaki died, died like any other piece of cannon fodder, I began to realize, and when Dan died under my hands four years later I was convinced. _–I took in his niece out of guilt, for my failure had taken from her the only parent she could remember. I tried to fill that gaping hole in her where a parent had once been, but ultimately fell flat because all ability and desire to be a mother died with Nawaki.—_ Eventually, all whom I love, even that girl I raised up from her early days, will pass into Death's hands and out of mine.

And Death rests its gnarled hands on my shoulders now, reminding me that one day I will be His and that then I will have to face all those whom I failed.

I was arrogant enough to believe that I could run away from time.

But I was wrong.

Time's hands are wrapped around my throat, and it will not release me, not until I can learn to live in the light.


End file.
